This invention relates to feeding of electronic components such as chip-type electronic components (hereinafter referred to as "chips"), electronic components having lead wires (hereinafter referred to as "lead-type electronic components") and the like to an electronic component mounting apparatus, and more particularly to feeding of electronic components which is adapted to feed a mounting head of the mounting apparatus with electronic components by means of a storing unit such as a feeder module adapted to be detachable with respect to the mounting apparatus.
A electronic component feeder which has been conventionally used for an electronic component mounting apparatus is adapted to be fixedly arranged with respect to the mounting apparatus. Therefore, when it is required to mount a wide variety of electronic components on printed boards, the number of feeders to be arranged on the mounting apparatus must be increased, leading to large sizing of the electronic component mounting apparatus.
A conventional mechanism for feeding electronic components to the mounting apparatus includes feeder units corresponding to sorts of electronic components to be mounted on printed circuit boards. The conventional feeding mechanism causes each of the feeder modules to be emptied of electronic components when a mounting head of the mounting apparatus repeatedly carries out an operation of taking out electronic components from the feeder unit to successively mount them on printed circuit boards. In such situation, it has been conventionally carried out that the emptied feeder unit is replenished with electronic components by hands or the like or replaced with a feeder unit filled with electronic components. Further, the conventional mechanism often causes electronic components to be undesirably left in the feeder unit when a required mounting operation is completed. This causes interruption of the electronic component mounting apparatus to be required during manufacturing of printed circuit boards for one lot or much time and labor to be required for recovering and storing excessive electronic components after the manufacturing.
Also, the conventional electronic component feeding system fails to feed a variety of electronic components in various forms to the electronic component mounting apparatus, although such feeding is desired to develop an electronic component mounting apparatus which permits various kinds of electronic components fed in a variety of forms to be mounted on printed circuit boards. Such feeding forms include a package, a taping which comprises a tape and electronic components such as chips or lead-type electronic components held, for example, in a row on the tape. Also, the feeding is desired to be rapidly accommodated to change in lot of printed circuit boards during the manufacturing.
Recently, a tape, a magazine, a package and the like which have been conventionally used as a chip storing means has been replaced with a bulk-type storing case, which is constructed so as to randomly house chips in a case body and deliver the chips one by one from the case body and adapted to be mounted in the form of a chip feed means on a chip mounting apparatus. Such a bulk-type storing case is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publications Nos. 280129/1987 (62-280129), 22378/1988 (63-22378), 82974/1988 (63-82974) and 82975/1988 (63-82975).
The conventional bulk-type storing case is generally adapted to randomly store chips in a space defined in the case body and deliver the chips from a lower portion of the space through a delivery passage formed in the case body so as to communicate with an exterior of the case.
Unfortunately, the conventional bulk-type storing case causes the chips to be caught in the delivery passage, to thereby fail in smooth delivery of the chips; because the chips are outward delivered from the space of the case body formed into a large volume sufficient to randomly store the chips therein through the delivery passage substantially decreased in sectional area so as to permit only one chip to pass therethrough.
The assignee proposed a chip package wherein chips are stored in a spirally continuous packing path formed in a casing of the package, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application No. 140994/1989 (1-140994). The chip package is manufactured and sold under a tradename "DISC PACK" from the assignee and adapted to concurrently exhibit both of a chip storage function and a chip feed function which have been deemed to contradict each other. For this purpose, the chip package is constructed so as to store chips in a row in the packing path of the casing and feed compressed air to the packing path to deliver the chips in order from a delivery port defined at an end of the packing path.
Unfortunately, when the chip package is used as a chip feed means for a chip mounting apparatus, the above-described construction of the chip package causes replacement of the chip package due to emptying of chips from the chip package or the like to be manually carried out. Thus, in order to ensure continuous running of a chip mounting apparatus, it is desired to accomplish automatic replacement of the chip package.